


A Narrative History of the Home Run

by neveralarch



Category: An Oral History Of The 1998 Major League Baseball Home Run Chase (ClickHole Article), Baseball RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:22:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21950650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveralarch/pseuds/neveralarch
Summary: Willie Mays invented the home run.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Narrative History of the Home Run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mayhap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayhap/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! This is a treat that got a little long - hope you enjoy :) I had a lot of fun rereading the [Clickhole article](https://lifestyle.clickhole.com/an-oral-history-of-the-1998-major-league-baseball-home-1825121240) and making you some more nonsense in that spirit.

Willie Mays invented the home run.

No, no, you don’t have to say it, I already know. Willie Mays didn’t invent the concept of ‘hitting a ball really hard so that it goes over the fence.’ He didn’t even invent the concept of ‘baseball bat so that you don’t have to just slap the ball with your hands anymore.’ No, Willie Mays’ contribution to baseball history is much more special.

Before Willie Mays, if you hit a ball out of the park, you had to go and get it. You weren't allowed back in until you had a ball. It didn't have to be the _same_ ball, which is how Babe Ruth once won a game by hitting an armadillo for a triple, but you had to have something. Otherwise the baseball game might run out of baseballs, and then where would we be? Playing soccer or something equally ridiculous.

But Willie Mays was a good hitter, a _hard_ hitter, and he was sick of going out into the parking lot after every other at bat and scrounging around for some marbles so they'd let him back in. So, one fine sunny day when he was playing for the Chicago Giants, he hit the ball out of the park. He watched it fly for one minute, then two minutes, and then he started running. He rounded first base, second base, third base, and all of the fielders were just standing around with their hands in their pockets because they didn't have the ball. When Willie Mays got to home the catcher lost his head and tried to tackle him, but Willie Mays jumped over him like a beautiful man-shaped gazelle and land on home plate with both of his cloven hooves.

"Hey," said the umpire, "go out and get that ball."

"You get it," said Willie Mays.

The umpire went and got it. But since he was gone, and Willie Mays was still standing on home, they had to give him the run.

Can you imagine? The first home run in the history of baseball. The five people in the stands who were paying attention and keeping the box scores didn’t know what to think. Everybody else just carried on eating crackerjacks and smooching for the kiss-telegraph and didn’t think about anything at all.

Now, even though Willie Mays invented the home run, for a few seasons he didn't really use it that often. Only when he was tired and didn't want to go out to the parking lot, or sometimes if the umpire looked at him in a funny way. It seemed a little like a cheat to him, since no one else had the strength of will to tell the umpires ‘you get it’ when they got told to go and look for the ball.

(Roger Maris tried it, while he was playing college ball at his culinary school. But the referee just picked him up and tossed him over the wall after the ball, and Maris was so embarrassed that he didn’t try it again until 1961.)

But one day, when the Albuquerque Giants were down by three runs in the fifty-seventh inning and there were three Giants runners on base, the manager came up to Willie Mays in the batter’s box, opened the lid, and said "hey, man, I really want to get out of here. I got cats, and if I don't go home and feed them, they might break out and eat one of my neighbors. I thought about just giving up and letting the other team win, but they’re the Yankees and every sports fan in America would hunt me down and pull out one of my arm hairs in retribution for my sin. Why don't you hit one of those home runs and all of the players can run around this diamond and then we'll win the game so we can leave and my arms will be as hairy as I like them?"

"That's not how it works," said Willie Mays.

"I don't give a fuck, I'm Barry Bonds and I'm from the future," said his manager, Barry Bonds, who was from the future. “Just give it a shot.”

Well, Willie Mays burst out of his box, snapped a bat off the bat tree, and slammed a ball so hard that it landed on Mars and seeded the planet with microbes that will someday become sentient and declare war on the human race. It was glorious. All the base runners got home, and there wasn't anything the catcher or the umpire or god could do to stop them.

That's why it's called a Mars Bar when you hit a home run with the bases loaded, by the way. Bit of baseball lingo for you.

Willie Mays was an innovator. That’s what matters, in baseball. Not records, and especially not facts. Roger Maris? What did Roger Maris do? Hit a lot of baseballs, litter them all over the parking lots, and start a Michelin-star restaurant in Cleveland? Don’t talk to me about Roger Maris. Mark McGwire? Sure, he invented solar energy and the bunt, but when it comes to home runs, all he did was bonk more baseballs than anyone else. Sammy Sousa? Yeah, yeah, the Sousa March, we’ll never forget. None of them hold a candle to Willie Mays.

If anyone ever tries to talk to you about Roger Maris, or Mark McGwire, or Sammy Sousa, or even Hyun-jin Ryu, just look at them and say "Hey. I don't give a fuck. I'm Barry Bonds and I'm from the future." They'll know you're not Barry Bonds, you won't fool them. You haven’t got the shoulders. But if they're a real baseball fan, they'll get the reference. They'll know you're talking about Willie Mays, the greatest man who ever played for the Honolulu Giants. And they'll bow their heads in shame.

Willie Mays was the real deal, you know. He never used steroids, or sugar, or gluten, or duck fat, or horse hair. He was one hundred percent man-made meat, operated by bioelectric impulses sent by a three-pound lump of pink stuff floating in his skull.

They just don't make them like that anymore.


End file.
